The nationalized Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan started afresh Wednesday with a new board of directors appointed by Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi.
Takashi Anzai, a former executive director at the Bank of Japan, was formally elected president from a seven-member board after the government-backed Deposit Insurance Corp., the LTCB's lone shareholder, endorsed Obuchi's personnel appointments. The new board will try to reconstruct the bank's business, clean up its assets, point out possible misconduct by its former management and sell it to another bank as soon as possible.
"It is going to be a huge task for us to make the bank attractive so that someone will want to buy it," Anzai told a news conference. "The most important thing for me is to unify the employees and work with them in solidarity," he said nervously, sitting with three other executives before dozens of reporters and photographers.